


A More Permanent Destination

by julieta



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Cuddling and Snuggling, Episode: s02e01 A Scandal in Belgravia, F/M, Great Hiatus, Hurt/Comfort, I want heterosexual nuzzling and by God I will have it, Love Triangle, M/M, Multi, Post Reichenbach, and I love Irene and Sherlock, and lots of pain, both emotional and physical, we hurt the characters we love the most
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-08
Updated: 2012-04-08
Packaged: 2017-11-03 06:04:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/378113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/julieta/pseuds/julieta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A few times he gasps “John,” but she doesn’t think he even knows he’s saying it.</p><p>or, Sherlock's in trouble, John's not around, and Irene's only a phone call away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part 1

Of the myriad things that Sherlock had imagined might kill him – bombs, snipers, Bedouin assassins – he never dreamed that it might be a skinny twentysomething mugger with a hunting knife. And in Manhattan, of all places! He’s practically quivering with indignation.

“Wallet,” the aforementioned young man – born and raised in Long Island, no history of drug abuse, trained on the cello, left-handed – demands, brandishing the knife in a manner he probably thinks is menacing. Sherlock sighs.

“I would prefer not to.”

His mugger snorts. “Is that supposed to impress me? The world’s second most obvious Melville reference?”

“To be honest, I didn’t really expect you to…get it,” Sherlock shrugs.

“Clearly. Wallet, now!” Another brandish from the knife, which Sherlock now admits to himself is actually quite large and just a bit serrated.

But he has about four separate identities in his wallet right now, for people who, strictly speaking, do not actually exist outside of the various credit cards and drivers licenses he’s carrying. So Sherlock very much does not want to lose his wallet and have to call Mycroft for four new identities.

 _What is it they say about eggs and baskets, Sherlock?_ , he mourns to himself. He’s getting sloppy, and now he’s about to get stabbed for it. And below 23rd Street!

“I’m sorry, and I really am not trying to be difficult, but I can’t give you my wallet.” He inhales hugely and closes his eyes to brace himself for the next part. “You can have my coat if you like.”

He opens his eyes to a blank stare from his assailant. “It’s worth quite a lot,” he explains.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Not at all.”

“Oh my god, I really do not have time for this. And if you’re thinking I won’t stab you, you’re wrong,” says the mugger. Sherlock knows he’s not lying – his left pinkie finger makes that perfectly clear – but he’s still trying to figure out how he can walk away from this with both his wallet and his good health. And if he can’t, he has to decide which one he wants to relinquish.

“No, I’m sure you would.” He falls back on his favorite defense mechanism.

“The first time you stabbed someone, you were between the ages of 14 and 16, in an attempt to protect your mother from your alcoholic father.”

“What – ”

“When your mother, after your father’s death, took up with his brother, also an alcoholic, you ran away to live with a somewhat older gentleman whose name began with an – M?” Sherlock isn’t actually sure how his assailant is responding to this – his face is totally impassive – but he might as well finish.

“Since you left him, you’ve been living mostly on friends’ sofas and occasionally the odd subway station, and you’ve had occasion to assault at least 3 other people, though you’ve never actually been arrested. Now,” Sherlock continues, “you’ve never actually seen the inside of a jail cell, and I can assure you that if you abscond with my wallet tonight, you will be spending the foreseeable future inside of one. So,” _time to wrap up_ , “now that we understand each other a bit better, we can both make informed decisions about what’s going to happen next.”

Speech concluded, Sherlock puts on his iciest expression and waits.

The mugger blinks at him for a few moments, then lowers the knife and chuckles. He shakes his head.

“That – that’s a neat trick, man.” Still laughing, he steps forward, as though to walk past Sherlock, who steps to the side. For a moment, he actually thinks this will work out, that his would-be thief is so taken aback that he’s just leaving.

Then there’s a sudden flash, an arm thrusting out so quickly Sherlock barely even registers what’s happening.

“Has anyone ever told you you’re _really_ obnoxious?” the young man hisses into his ear. He shoves Sherlock back, and Sherlock crashes into a wall, frozen in place as footsteps race away down the street.

In the hysterical moment before the pain registers, he rejoices that he still has his wallet. _Success!_ Then he realizes his legs are giving way beneath him and reevaluates.

 _Fuck_. “Ow,” he says, stupidly, and then he can’t stop saying it. “Ow. Ow. Ow ow ow owowowowowow.” _Stop it._ He shuts up. _Focus. Get help._

_John._

_No, no no no. Think._ The pain beneath his ribs is coming into sharper relief now.

_John._

“Okay!” Sherlock can feel himself starting to panic and deliberately forces it down. “Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.”

Shake head. Think. John isn’t here. Mycroft isn’t here. Hospital isn’t safe, never safe. This corner isn’t safe. ( _Still have my wallet hahahaha)_ Where is safe?

_Oh. Okay._

It’s been in the back of his mind since he landed at J.F.K. five hours ago, and now it comes to him just as a red haze starts to cloud the edges of his vision. __

_Irene._ Irene has an apartment in Gramercy Park. He knows because Irene told him this, in a text from an American number about four months before his leap from St. Barts. (“1 Lexington Avenue. Let’s have dinner.”)

He could get there. Maybe. He braces his knees and tries to push himself back up the wall, but collapses onto the sidewalk with a choked-off grunt.

No standing. No walking. With hands he can barely control, he works his cell phone out of his pocket, then has to pause and let his head stop swimming. He makes the mistake of looking down at his chest – _no no no delete delete_. _Move your thumb, you know the number. You memorized it. Ow. Ow._

Eventually ( _time passing, blood being lost_ ), Sherlock manages to dial and lift the phone to his ear. It rings.

It rings again.

Again.

Panic fights its way up his throat.

“Hello?”

_Okay. Okay._

“Irene.”

A pause.

“Aren’t you supposed to be dead?”

\---------------------------------------------------

The call from Sherlock comes at 12:31 AM. When the clock turns 12:32, Irene is thrusting her feet into the heels she kicked off earlier by the front door, pulling on her trench coat with one arm and punching the number for her personal doctor – every dominatrix should have a discreet physician on speed dial – with her other hand. She answers as Irene is slamming the door to her apartment and shaking her other arm into its sleeve.

“I need you to be at my apartment in ten minutes. Someone’s been stabbed,” Irene says, not even bothering to lock her door.

“Wha – did you do this?”

“No.”

“And the hospital isn’t an option…” Dr. Chandra – Mishri, to Irene – says. She’s waiting to hear a reason why not, but Irene ignores that.

“I don’t know how bad it is yet, but he sounded terrible.” Irene’s heels make an unholy racket on the stairs as she bounds down them. “Can you just get here?”

“You should really take him to a hospital, I don’t even know what all I need to bring,” Mishri says, but in the background, Irene can hear her moving, her keys jingling.

“Just bring everything!”

“That’s really not how this wor- ” Irene hangs up.

Her driver has gone for the evening and her car is half a block away. She runs to it as fast as her shoes will allow, and when she gets to it, she lapses and starts to unlock the passenger-side door before remembering where she is. “Fuck!” She can feel herself starting to panic, the tight grip of her anxiety working its way up her throat, threatening to strangle her. She doesn’t fight it, lets the fear push her as she twists the key in the ignition and peels out toward 2nd Avenue.

 _Go go go go go go_.

\---------------------------------------------------

After Irene says “I’m coming” and hangs up, Sherlock feels himself relax more completely into the pain. He lets himself groan aloud, and wraps both arms around his stomach.

It hurts, but more than the pain, he’s feeling exhausted and more disoriented by the second. He closes his eyes, just for a moment, and when he opens them, he’s lying on his side on the pavement, knees drawn up and arms still around himself. The word “fetal” crosses his mind.

 _Opposite of fetal_ , he thinks. _Mortal?_

No, Irene is coming. The thought of seeing her again –and like this, curled up on the pavement – sends a bolt of pain through his stomach. The last time he saw her, she was bailing out of a moving truck in Jaisalmer; he’d stayed hidden in the truck bed beneath a burlap tarp for another hour before leaping out himself.

Sherlock mourns, a touch hysterically, that he cut a much more imposing figure the last time she saw him – that scimitar! Not quite so impressive now.

_John._

He’s going into shock, and realizing that it’s happening only makes him panic more, breath wheezing hard in and out of him. Irene is coming. _Irene. Irene. Irene._

He shivers –why is he so cold, he’s so cold. This is shock. This is what shock blankets are for. _Should have asked Irene to bring a blanket. No. That does not make sense._

As headlights swerve around the corner, he thinks. _Anyway_ , _I’m sure she has a blanket at home._

\---------------------------------------------------

Irene leaves the car idling and scrambles out of it, terrified by the sight of Sherlock Holmes curled up on the pavement. Even more than knowing he’s hurt, more than the pool of blood coiling out from under him, it’s the fact that he’s lying down that has cold fingers of dread tightening around her stomach. For a few seconds, she’s so scared, she swears her heart doesn’t beat at all.

Then her hands are pulling him ( _Sherlock_ ), to lie on his back and he’s moaning so loudly that it actually reassures her. He’s alive. He’s alive and he’s awake and he’s breathing enough to make that much noise, and then he’s opening his eyes and saying “ow.”

For an instant, Irene freezes, strangely close to laughing, but it passes at the sight of Sherlock’s face. ( _Sherlock, touching Sherlock_.)

“Let me see,” she says, but when she tries to move his arms, he clenches his eyes shut and actually whimpers. The sound almost sends Irene into hand-flapping hysterics, but again she pushes that impulse down. “Okay, all right, let’s get you home, okay?”

Sherlock doesn’t respond, but Irene keeps going – _don’t freeze up, move fast_. “I have a doctor coming, sweetie, you’ll be okay, but we have to stand up now.” She burrows an arm under his shoulders and heaves him upright. He groans and he’s so heavy, Irene wonders if she can really _do_ this.

“Just to the car, Sherlock. We just have to get to the car, okay?” Irene kisses his temple and tries to calm down.

Mentally, she breaks down what she has to do: get Sherlock in the car, drive home, get Sherlock out of the car, get Sherlock upstairs. And then Mishri will be there and everything will be okay. She doesn’t let herself think that everything might not be okay. She doesn’t let herself think about time passing. If she can just do each little step, it will be fine.

And the next step is to get Sherlock in the car.

“I can’t, I – ” Sherlock pants, and Irene braces herself.

“Yes, you can, get ready,” Irene says and Sherlock lets out a close-lipped wine. With what feels like a superhuman effort, Irene hauls him on to his feet and then immediately has to catch him when he starts to collapse again.

“Come on, come on, come on,” she mutters, forcing him to walk forward. With a few ungainly lurches, she guides him to the wrong side of the car (“Fuck!”) and has to drag Sherlock around to the passenger’s door. Just before her arms give out, she manages to pile him into the seat, where he arches up and groans.

For the first time, Irene sees the deep red stain on his white shirt.

 _Same colour as my nail varnish_ , she thinks and immediately reprimands herself: _God, Irene, keep it together._

\---------------------------------------------------

Sherlock is aware of what’s happening only in the most general sense. _Irene is here. Irene wants me to stand up. I can’t stand up._ Then he is standing somehow and all he can do is focus on breathing and then he’s in a car. Ow.

He dimly regrets not being in any position to process being with Irene again, but he’s too out of it, only aware of her peripherally – her arm holding him up, her shouted curse at one point.

He whines. Making noise helps, so he does it again.

From a thousand kilometres away, “Hold on, sweetie.”

\---------------------------------------------------

Irene normally considers herself both a good driver and someone who stays cool under pressure, but when she parks the car, she manages to get both right tires almost entirely on the curb and barely notices.

From the steps of her building, Mishri shouts, “Nice parking, English driver!”

 _Since when are there stereotypes about English driving_? Irene thinks. She keeps finding herself having profoundly irrelevant thoughts.

“You’ll have to help me, he’s practically unconscious,” Irene says, climbing out of the car.

“Irene, this is really not smart. Let’s call an ambulance,” Mishri says, but she steps forward to watch Irene open the car door.

Sherlock barely responds as Mishri sucks air through her teeth at the sight of him, but when Irene leans him over to ease him out of the car, he moans weakly.

“You’re okay, we’re almost there,” Irene murmurs, but she doesn’t stop. She hauls him out of the car more efficiently than gently, grimacing at Sherlock’s little noises of protest. Both she and Mishri drag one of Sherlock’s arms over their shoulders and haul him into the building, and then into the elevator.

 As they wait to reach Irene’s floor, there is an anticlimactic silence broken only by Sherlock’s labored breathing. Mishri clears her throat.

“Are you going to explain any of this?”

“Probably not.”

“Because he looks _really_ familiar to me.”

Their eyes meet over Sherlock’s dangling head and Irene says, firmly, “No, I don’t think he does.”

“Mmm-hmm, that’s what I figured.”

They shuffle Sherlock into Irene’s unlocked apartment, where Mishri lets out a low whistle. “Did you redecorate?”

“Uh, yes, last month,” Irene grunts. (She’d been trying to make it more like her old place in London, which she still misses every day. She’d found the same wallpaper, but the overall effect is still a bit off.)

One of her favorite new pieces is the long rosewood dining table across the living room from the entrance, and the two of them walk the now-unconscious Sherlock toward it.

He rouses when they have him lying flat on his back on the table, as Irene is snapping shut the thick white drapes over the bay windows. She turns and sees his tired eyes are open and watching her. Without thinking, she drops to her knees by the table and presses a kiss to his sweaty forehead.

“Hello, sweetie,” she whispers. He doesn’t speak, but bumps his nose forward to brush hers, and she nuzzles at it gently. There’s a cluck from the end of the table.

“He _is_ pretty handsome,” Mishri chirps. She’s unpacking things from her bag – gauze, a suture kit, disposable syringes – with a raised eyebrow.

Irene looks at Sherlock, whom she’s never seen looking worse. His eyes have closed and he’s panting shallowly. “Yes,” Irene agrees, “he is.”

One of his hands is hanging off the edge of the table and Irene holds it in both of hers, stomach clenching at how cold he feels.

“I really wish you would let me call the hospital,” Mishri says, and Irene actually considers it. She feels exhausted all of a sudden, in this quiet moment between frantic activity. She imagines handing Sherlock over to EMTs, the painkillers, the stretcher, the gloves and sterilization and how _safe_ it would be. For a long moment, she lets herself think about it.

But Sherlock looks at her with exhausted, pleading eyes and she shakes her head. “No, we can’t. I want to, but it’s just not an option.” Sherlock’s shoulders relax a little.

 _You can trust me,_ she thinks. _I’ll show you._

“Okay, but seriously, I’ve never done something like this. I’m not an army doctor or something,” Mishri says as she cuts away Sherlock’s bloody shirt with blunt-tipped scissors.

She doesn’t notice how the words make Sherlock grimace, his eyes slamming shut. Irene kisses his hand.

“Help me get his coat off.”

\---------------------------------------------------

Sherlock tries desperately not to think about John, as he’s been doing for five months. If he thinks about John, he’ll totally fall apart.

Instead he focuses on Irene, lovely Irene, brilliant Irene, who is holding his hand and kissing it and won’t let anyone find him.

“This is lidocaine,” the unfamiliar doctor says from somewhere far away. He barely registers the prick of the needle in his stomach.

“…hold him down for me,” he hears and then Irene is hovering above him, face serious.

 _Hi there_.

The pain of the suture needle is manageable if he lets himself groan and tremble and occasionally thrash against Irene’s hands.

And when he does, Irene presses her forehead to his and makes soothing noises and that feels nice so he says, “Keep – ow – keep doing that,” and she does and she says “Sweetheart, baby, baby,” and normally that would be dull but it’s not dull tonight.

He thinks, as he shakes, _Over soon._

Then Irene whispers, “Precious thing,” and he thinks maybe he can take a little more.

\---------------------------------------------------

Irene thinks she’s never been more in love with Sherlock than when he whimpers and asks her to keep talking.

Neither of them looks down at what Mishri is doing; in fact for most of it, they keep their eyes closed, and Irene murmurs encouragement while Sherlock sweats and keens.

A few times he gasps “ _John_ ,” but she doesn’t think he even knows he’s saying it.

When it’s over and Mishri is taping gauze over the stitches, Irene gentles her grip but doesn’t let go immediately, keeping a soft stream of reassurance and praise: “All over, you’re okay now, sweet thing, poor baby.”

Sherlock nods weakly and starts to fall asleep as Irene presses a kiss to his cheek. When he stills and his breathing deepens, she lets go and stands up. As though she’s absorbed it from Sherlock, she’s completely exhausted, and her hands shake as she runs them over her face.

“Maybe you should go sit down,” Mishri suggests, gently. Irene whips her head toward her, having completely forgotten she was there.

“In a minute. I want to clean him up a little. And put him in bed.”

“Whoa, you’ve got a little…” Mishri lifts a hand to indicate her face. Irene looks at her own hands and sees that they’re smeared with blood, and without thinking, she brings her fingers to her mouth and licks them. Coppery.

“Okay, wow. There are like a dozen reasons not to do that,” Mishri shakes her head. “What is the deal with you two? I thought you were gay.”

Irene looks at Sherlock’s face. Asleep, his curls haloed out around his head, he looks almost beatific. She sucks a bit more blood off her fingers and nods.

“Then…what?”

Irene stops cleaning her fingers and shakes her head. “It’s nothing. He has…someone waiting for him, somewhere else.”

_I’ll come after you if you don’t._

“This is all just bizarre,” Mishri says, and her words break Irene out of her reverie.

“Yes, well. Bizarre is kind of my specialty.” She goes to the bathroom for a flannel and then to the kitchen to fill a shallow bowl with water.

She cleans the blood and sweat off Sherlock as gently as she can, delicate on the pale skin she’s never seen before. He doesn’t even stir when she wipes the cloth over his neck, water trickling into the hollow of his throat.

Her work finished for the moment, Mishri goes to the kitchen and pours herself a glass of Irene’s shiraz without asking. She leans in the doorway with it and watches Irene, how careful she is, how she looks at Sherlock’s face.

He _is_ pretty handsome, she thinks, and decides maybe that’s explanation enough.

\---------------------------------------------------

Sherlock, asleep on the table, doesn’t dream at all.

\---------------------------------------------------

The two women – one at his shoulders and one between his knees – carry him to Irene’s bedroom and tuck him beneath the duvet. (There is a guest bedroom, but the thought doesn’t cross Irene’s mind.)

Against the dark sheets and drifts of pillows, he looks painfully small and pale. _Poor thing._

“It looks like a vampire bordello in here,” Mishri laughs. (She’s right, but that’s more or less what Irene was aiming for.)

“I’ll stay here for the night, okay?” she says, and Irene is grateful she doesn’t to ask. Along with the desperate relief that it’s over for now and Sherlock is stitched up and in bed – her bed – she’s feeling a new, less urgent fear. Somehow the sight of Sherlock still and unconscious is even more disconcerting than the thrashing and moaning had been. She’ll sleep a little easier knowing someone who can help is only a shout away.

She just says, “Thank you.”

“And now I’m going to go soak in that claw-foot tub until I’m pruney.” With a decisive spin on her heel, Mishri leaves, closing the door behind her.

Irene’s exhaustion has finally caught up with her, so she kicks off her heels and shrugs off her coat. It feels like she put them on days ago, but the clock says it’s only 1:46.

Now she crawls into bed and lies on her side, looking at him. A single errant curl has fallen over his forehead, and she brushes it away before cupping his face in her palm. At the press of her hand, he makes a heart-breaking little noise and nuzzles his face toward her. Irene’s heart, not for the first time that evening, melts. She shuffles herself closer, flings an arm over Sherlock’s chest, and buries her face in his neck.

He rubs his face into her hair.

 _I love you so much,_ Irene thinks, as she falls into a deep, dreamless sleep. 


	2. Part 2

Sherlock wakes up 3 hours later with a loud groan that rouses Irene. For a moment, neither of them realizes what’s woken them, and they just lie there, blinking blearily. Then Sherlock arches up a little and gasps, and Irene is tumbling out of the bed and pulling her slip back on before she’s even fully awake.

“Mishri!” she yells, flinging open the bedroom door, clumsy in her sleepiness. The guest bedroom is only a few steps away, and she stumbles toward it. “Mishri!”

“What – what the…” Dr. Chandra is stumbling forward herself, eyes still clenched shut. “What’s happen – ?”

“He’s hurting, he needs something,” Irene says, and as if to underscore her point, Sherlock moans weakly.

“Okay, yes, just let me get…” Mishri dashes off unsteadily toward the dining room and Irene hurries back to Sherlock, who has fisted his hands in the sheets and buried his face into the pillow, eyes clenched shut.

“Hold on, sweetie, just one second, just hold on,” she says, hands hovering above him, afraid to touch. “She’s coming, hold on.” Then Mishri is nudging her out of the way, prepped syringe in hand, and peeling back the bandage. Irene looks away until she tapes the gauze back down and puts a hand to Sherlock’s forehead.

“He’s not feverish, he just needs to stay in bed as long as you can keep him here,” she says.

“He’s going to be okay,” Irene says, meaning it to be a question. Mishri nods and yawns.

“Yes, he’ll be okay. We’ll just keep an eye on him.” Already, Sherlock is unclenching his fists a little and his groans are turning into shallow gasps instead. “I’ll go get him some water,” Mishri says, and she leaves, yawning again.

Irene presses a kiss to Sherlock’s temple and he opens his eyes. He whines, a soft noise in his throat and murmurs, “Dizzy.”

“I know, just drink a little water and we’ll go back to sleep.”

“Is th-this your bed?” he says, sounding genuinely curious.

Irene smiles and hums, “Mmm-hmm.”

“Smells nice,” he slurs, and Irene closes her eyes for a moment.

_Why would I want to have dinner if I’m not hungry?_

“Hey,” Mishri says from behind her, and holds out a glass of water with a straw in it. “Make him drink this. And get me again in another three hours.” Yawning again, she leaves.

At Irene’s urging, Sherlock drinks about half the glass of water in weak pulls at the straw, and then collapses back into the pillows, light-headed from the lidocaine.

Irene draws the duvet over him and crawls back into bed. “Better?” she asks.

He nods and says, “Sorry.”

“Shush. Go back to sleep.” Sherlock nods again and Irene takes one of his hands and tucks it under her chin. They drift off together.

\------------------------------------

The next time he wakes up, some hours later, he does so shouting for John. The indignity of waking up writhing in pain and calling for someone who isn’t there would be humiliating if Irene even seemed to notice.

The lidocaine leaves him dizzy, but not particularly tired, so he accepts the plate of dry toast the doctor – parents from India, history of sex work (no doubt how she knows Irene), boyfriend who plans to propose soon (although she doesn’t know it yet), occasional smoker – thrusts at him.

“And how do you know her?” he asks Irene when she lies back down beside him, her head propped up on one pale hand.

“Haven’t you already deduced?” she teases, but her words rankle a little.

“I’ve been a bit distracted,” he says drily.

In the early morning sunlight, filtering through the blood red curtains, Irene looks softly luminous, hair loose and spilling over one shoulder.

 _Distracted_.

He’s in New York to track down, interrogate, and perhaps kill a former assassin who left Moriarty’s network four years ago. Sherlock’s not certain he’s still alive, or that he’s still in New York, but the only lead he has is an address in the Upper East Side from last year. It’s something.

Right now, light-headed and in bed with Irene he feels an uncharacteristic lassitude. Even if he wanted to, he’s not sure he could stand and walk out under his own power. So he lies there and listens to Irene.

“I met Mishri when she was studying at King’s for a year. She did some domme work to help pay for school, so we ran in the same unsavoury circles for a while.” She pauses to snuggle tighter against Sherlock.

_Distracted._

“And then she moved back to New York, and after my untimely death in Pakistan, I worked my way over here. Everyone in my profession should have a trustworthy doctor on call.” She’s tracing the edges of the bandage with one fingertip.

“And how do you actually know she’s trustworthy?” Sherlock asks. He’s getting increasingly dizzy as the minutes pass, the pain in his side receding.

“Who could be more discreet than a dominatrix-doctor?” Irene jokes, but her words remind Sherlock of John – _warm good far-away John_ – and he’s seized by a fit of homesickness for 221b. John tapping at his laptop while Sherlock lounges on the sofa in a nicotine reverie. The skull on the mantel. Mrs. Hudson aghast at body parts in the freezer. John making tea. John.

“Oh, Sherlock,” Irene coos. She presses a kiss to the joint of his neck and shoulder. She whispers, “You miss him so much.”

“No,” Sherlock snaps, making his own head swim with the suddenness of it. “No, don’t…” He swallows. “Something else…tell me how you got to New York.”

Seizing this new subject with unconvincing enthusiasm, Irene chirps “Well! I stayed in Rajasthan for several weeks, avoiding that horrendous brother of yours,” – Sherlock smiles at this – “and then stowed away on an oil rig at Kandla.”

Sherlock snorts. “How very eighteenth century of you.”

“Oh yes! I tucked my hair into a cap and wore _breeches_ ; it was all very Robert Louis Stevenson.” Sherlock’s eyes are drooping shut. “When we docked in Piraeus, I had a contact doctor me up a lovely new Australian passport and some traveler’s checks and caught a flight to Laguardia.” She’s tracing patterns on Sherlock’s chest with cool ivory fingers.

“And you’re still beating people as a career choice.”

“It’s what I’m good at.”

Sherlock wonders just how good she really is, and what it even means to be good at that sort of thing, and realizes too late that he’s spoken aloud.

“I could show you if you like,” Irene murmurs in his ear. He has to close his eyes for a moment.

“I – I think I’ve had enough physical abuse for one day,” he says. A kiss to his neck.

“Of course you have, darling,” she soothes. “Of course.”

\------------------------------------

They stay in bed, Sherlock drifting in and out of sleep, and Irene lavishing attention on him. The conversation is a minefield for her, full of words or images or ideas that make Sherlock tense up, or fall silent and look away. Anything about London, or John, or Regent’s Park , or doctors, or Baker Street, or the Tube, or blogs leaves him quiet and distant, and Irene has to coax him back.

Mishri leaves at noon, promising to come back around sunset, and ordering Irene not to let Sherlock move from the bed. “He’ll pop those stitches like bubble wrap and I am in no mood to do them again.”

They’re in the kitchen and Irene is trying to decide if some milky tea will make Sherlock feel better or send him into another sad spell.

“No, I’ll make sure he stays still. Thank you, for everything. I know last night was a bit intense.”

“That’s what friends are for: risking their medical licenses to sew up stab wounds at 1 AM.” Irene nods. “Okay, I’ll be back after dinner. Try to keep him eating and drinking if you can.”

_Let’s have dinner._

Back in bed, she and Sherlock doze more, Irene again wrapped around him and Sherlock again not objecting.

“Let’s go back to Rajasthan,” she says, lips moving against his shoulder. “We could find another truck to bail out of and pick up where we left off. You could come with me this time.”

She’d asked him to, when they’d separated near Jaisalmer. She’s gripped his hand and shouted, to be heard over the engine, “Come with me!” He’d just stared. “Please!”

“I can’t.”

“You can. Come with me.” He didn’t speak. She’d waited as long as she could stand, then pressed a sudden kiss to his hand and rolled unceremoniously out of the truck bed and into a roadside sand bank. Then she caught a bus to Jaisalmer and was drunk for a solid month.

Now, in a far-away bedroom in New York City, Sherlock sighs. “Yes. Yes, we’ll do that.”

Happy at this lie, Irene buries her face in his neck and falls silent, inhaling the smell of him. They don’t speak for a long time.

\------------------------------------

They make love that night, when they can’t sleep anymore and Sherlock is numb and dizzy from another injection.

In her frequent fantasies, Irene had imagined sex with Sherlock would be aggressive, a struggle for the upper hand. She’d imagined herself laughing and biting hard at his ear, him pinning her hands to the bed. Or desk.

_Until you begged for mercy twice._

This is nothing like that. After Sherlock defies his orders to stay in bed and manages to take a shower without getting his bandage wet or knocking himself out in a swoon, he returns to Irene’s bed, damp and smelling of her jasmine shampoo, a towel slung around his hips. Irene looks up from her Blackberry, where she’d been trying to reschedule her clients for the week, and can’t help but raise an eyebrow. Sherlock doesn’t notice.

He swoons gingerly, if such a thing is possible, on to the bed and flings one hand over his eyes.

“May have been over-ambitious,” he groans. Irene hums in agreement as Sherlock’s mouth draws into a tense line. “I still can’t believe I got mugged.”

“Welcome to New York.”

“I offered him my coat instead of my wallet,” Sherlock says. Irene practically sputters in exaggerated indignation.

“You didn’t! Your beautiful coat?” Sherlock nods. “Oh Sherlock, that coat is irreplaceable! The lining has had my naked body all over it,” she teases.

But he doesn’t smile. Instead he says, so quietly she can barely hear, “I think about that all the time.”

Irene freezes.

“Sherlock?”

He’s still and silent.

She tucks her legs up under her and crawls to kneel, on elbows and knees, above him.

Gently, so gently, she tugs his hand away from his face.

His eyes are serious and slightly unfocused. She stares into them and runs her hands down his face, palm bumping over his cheekbone.

_I could cut myself slapping that face._

“You have a little freckle in your right eye,” she says, apropos of nothing. She’d never noticed it before.

“I’m dizzy,” he groans.

“I know.” And she leans down to kiss him, kiss the pale pink heart of his lips for the first time. It’s chaste and soft, and after a few seconds she pulls away, giving him the chance to stop her.

Instead he lifts his head to follow her, pressing his forehead to hers and breathing hard.

“Sherlock,” Irene exhales, and then they’re kissing again, Irene collapsing down to lie partially on top of him, careful to avoid where he’s hurt.

He’s pliant and slow beneath her, hands fumbling as they dig into the back of her long black peignoir, anchoring him against the dizziness. A gentle roll of Irene’s tongue and he opens his mouth, their breath mingling as Irene tastes him. (Spearmint: he used her toothbrush. The thought makes her almost delirious with pleasure.)

Panting now, he drops his head back to the pillow and clenches his eyes shut even tighter. But his hands are scrabbling in Irene’s gown, bunching it up around her shoulders, and she leans back to pull it up and off. His eyes stay shut, but his hands wrap around her hipbones. She dips down to kiss him again, her breasts pressing against his bare chest.

Except for his haltingly roaming hands, Sherlock is almost totally still. When Irene unintentionally puts too much weight on his injured side, he gasps into her mouth, and she feels guilty for how delicious the sound is. Having Sherlock under her like this, vulnerable and mostly naked, is a heady rush.

His neck, when she moves down to lave sucking kisses to it, tastes clean and feminine from his trip to her shower. If she closes her eyes, she can almost imagine she’s kissing a very broad-chested woman.

The Sherlock moans, deep in his throat, and ruins that illusion. Irene sucks briefly just below the hinge of his jaw, and he undulates, his whole body pressing against hers. Then he tugs at her shoulder and she shuffles back up to kiss him again.

When she finally sinks down on him, he tilts his head back and grips her hips so hard she can barely move. She’s slow, painfully slow, savouring every expression that crosses his face, knowing she’ll want to remember it all later.

She rocks in his lap, hands planted on his chest, in absolute silence, until something she does makes him gasp, a deep little “oh!” sound. His eyes fly open and he stares at her, almost plaintive, and exhales another soft, overwhelmed little sound.

Irene drops down on her elbows and takes his lips again, in a kiss so searing it leaves them both gasping and clinging to each other. He turns his head away and buries his face into the pillow, groaning in earnest now, and Irene presses gentle, soothing kisses down the side of his face.

“Irene,” he keens, and her heart breaks all over again.

They stay there, Irene rocking and Sherlock growing more and more incoherent, for a long time, until she can tell he’s almost there. She forces herself to go still, and holds his face in both of her hands.

Neither of them says anything; just let themselves catch their breath. Sherlock bumps his nose against Irene’s, asking for a kiss, and she almost laughs at how innocent a gesture it is for someone who’s inside of her.

They kiss slowly, Sherlock’s mouth slack, until Irene starts moving again, and Sherlock breaks the kiss to tilt their foreheads together. His eyes are closed in an expression of grave concentration, and he’s breathing deeply and deliberately.

“Sherlock,” Irene breathes. His breath hitches. “ _Sherlock_.”

“ _Yes_ ,” he groans, and he surges up, throwing one arm behind himself and wrapping the other around Irene to keep her seated. Irene twines her arms around his neck and holds him against her chest as he thrusts up into her and moans.

“Sherlock, Sherlock,” she murmurs into his hair. He presses his face into her collarbone and pushes up harder.

He sobs her name when he comes, and his entire body jerks convulsively. Irene leans back to watch his face, how he looks like he’s in pain, eyebrows knit together, breath coming through clenched teeth, feverish colour rising in his cheeks.

So beautiful she can’t stand it.

As he trembles through it, she kisses him everywhere, and gently lets him sink back down to the bed, little aftershocks making his hips jerk. Irene smooths the curls off his forehead.

 _Now we’re both defrocked_.

Gradually, but far too quickly for Irene, Sherlock comes back to himself. His breath evens out and all his muscles relax into heavy exhaustion, but he doesn’t say anything, just lies still and lets Irene murmur nonsense.

She puts her head on his chest and closes her eyes, so in love she doesn’t know what to do next. She wants to be happy, to enjoy having him like this, but she can’t shake off the sadness, the knowledge that it will be over soon.

The words are out of her mouth before she can stop them: “It could be me. I could be the one you come back to.”

Her words seem to hang in the air, almost echoing in the silence that follows. Irene is too terrified to move or say anything else, and she just lies there, waiting like a condemned woman. She barely even breathes.

After a long minute, Sherlock takes hold of her hand, laces their fingers together, and presses one slow kiss into her hair, and she understands then what she already knew: that he’s going to leave; that he won’t come back; that “home,” for him, will never mean Irene, and she wishes she hadn’t said anything, that she’d just lain here and let him go, that she didn’t want him so badly.

She only cries a little, hot tears running onto Sherlock’s chest, and he doesn’t say anything, just rubs circles into her back. The tears dry quickly but she doesn’t move, and eventually they fall asleep together.

\------------------------------------

Sherlock leaves two days later, dressed in a shirt Irene bought for him and his coat, the lining of which is now stained with his own blood. Irene wants to kiss him – every cell in her body is practically vibrating with the urge to kiss him, pull him back inside, break down and humiliate herself and sob and beg him not to leave.

Instead she lets go of his hand and closes the door behind him. Then she forces herself to sit very straight and still at her dining table, until she trusts herself not to yank the door open and go running after him; until she knows that even if she did, he’d already be gone. Then she goes to the kitchen, uncorks a bottle of wine, starts to take down a glass, changes her mind, and takes the bottle with her to the bedroom.

The bed is a mess, duvet and sheets rumpled and pillows strewn about. She stands beside it as she takes a long, unladylike pull from the bottle. She sets it on the bedside table and climbs into bed, where she lies face down in the place where Sherlock slept.

Irene inhales hard, but only smells herself, nothing of him.

Still, she stays there for a long time.

\------------------------------------

Years later, John will run his fingers over the pale, raised scar under Sherlock’s ribs. There will be many new scars, but this one in particular will stand out to John. A good doctor, he will know it was a stab wound from a fairly good-sized knife, that it would have bled a lot. That someone must have stitched it closed, and Sherlock couldn’t have done it himself. That someone must have taken care of him.

John will be a little curious, but mostly just grateful. He will press his lips against the scar and feel Sherlock writhe.

Sherlock will not explain, and John will not ask.


End file.
